Hi Adrian
Just seen your post, and pleased that our Adrian on here shared the link to my and Steve’s recent post regarding the incontinence issue.
We thought 2.5 years was bad enough getting towards a resolution but 5 years for you must be a nightmare! We only waited a year longer than we should have as Steve’s mum was ill and needed all of our attention in the last 12 months until her death.
Our NHS trust has also been very slow in responding to us, which we understand, they are underpaid, understaffed and in high demand.
Steve was also told the AUS was the way forward and was put on the list for surgery but we never felt very comfortable about it for the same reasons you quoted. We did some further research an discovered the alternative ATOMS surgery. At the time we enquired, only carried out in Reading both privately and on NHS, by the same surgeon. We waited more than six months to see if our trust could facilitate a referral but nothing forthcoming so in May we visited the surgeon and learnt more, he advised that, in his opinion, this was very likely to work for Steve. We decided to go ahead privately and the op was done two weeks ago (all the info in the post Adrian shared).
Two weeks on, Steve continues to get better each day, still in some discomfort but just taking paracetamol, managing to walk a bit further each day and had a go at driving a bit today (surgeon said two weeks post op).
As for the incontinence…hurrah! 90% improvement which for him takes him from 3-4 heavy duty pads a day, down to one light pad per day. Surgeon told us that he may not be fully dry from the get go as the ‘device’ will probably need a tweak/calibration which will be done at his follow up clinic appointment mid September. (He can have further tweaks in clinic in the future if needed).
So it’s possible that after that he may attain 100% continence…if not he is more than happy to live with the 10% stress incontinence in comparison to where he was.
If you need any further info, just shout!
Debbie